Visiting prof is voice of Syrian scholars

Nov. 29, 2013

Updated Dec. 1, 2013 8:55 p.m.

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Amal Alachkar, a visiting science professor at UCI, looks at cells through a microscope in one of the labs at the University. She fled Syria in 2011 with her family after a threatening interrogation by secret police. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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UCI visiting science professor Amal Alachkar works in one of the labs at the University. She fled Syria in 2011 with her family after a threatening interrogation by secret police. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Amal Alachkar, center, a visiting science professor at UCI, prepares to sit down to dinner with her husband Thair and son Eithar, 7. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Amal Alachkar, left, shares a meal at home with her husband Thair and her sons Eithar, 7, and Ibrahim, 14, from left. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Amal Alachkar, a visiting science professor at UCI, looks at cells through a microscope in one of the labs at the University. She fled Syria in 2011 with her family after a threatening interrogation by secret police. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

IRVINE – Dinner is ready.

It’s a traditional soup, more of a creamy porridge, made from yogurt and Bulgar and lentils and pumpkin, sprinkled with mint and a splash of olive oil, and eaten with flat Arabic bread.

In Syria – and in a home near UC Irvine – this is comfort food.

And on a quiet Friday evening, two boys, 14 and 7, take a seat with their father at the kitchen table in a two-bedroom apartment in University Hills, the housing community for faculty and staff of UC Irvine. They soon are joined by the boys’ mother, Amal Alachkar, a visiting professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and one of the leading voices of Syrian scholars in exile in the U.S.

Bubbling just under the surface of this calm scene, as it always is for Alachkar and her husband, Thair, is anguish over what is happening in their native country.

Though it’s been a few months since the United States threatened military action in Syria following a chemical attack that killed 1,429 civilians, the country remains torn by violence as rebel factions target the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

The bloodshed springs from peaceful protests that began in the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, when citizens in Syria went to the streets to demand political reforms and a reinstatement of civil rights, a new regime and other changes. The protests came after similar, successful uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

The response, in Syria, has been all out war.

The response, for Alachkar and her family, has been outrage, danger and forced exile.

• • •

Alachkar, 39, is gentle, warm and, even by the high standards of her profession, smart.

By training she is a neuropharmacologist, an expert in how drugs affect cellular function in the nervous system. She became interested in psychology as a child and followed through on that interest as an adult, eventually earning a doctorate. That path isn’t unusual in her family — her father is an economics professor and many of her eight siblings are doctors.

In the early 2000s, Alachkar founded and led the neuroscience research laboratory for molecular and behavioral studies in the School of Pharmacy at Aleppo University in Syria.

Today, that lab is in shambles.

Alachkar and her husband, Thair Alachkar (a dentist), were early dissenters against the government of al-Assad, who despite early promises as a reformer is widely regarded as a dictator who resorts to torture, imprisonment and killing to quash his political opponents — even slaughtering women and children.

In 2011, during a lecture at Allepo University, Alachkar referenced massacres in the southern city of Deraa. Soon after, she was interrogated by Syria’s secret police (the country has at least four different organizations that fall under that heading). The interrogators let Alachkar go, but she says the message was clear:

Speak out again, and the consequences will be dire.

• • •

Alachkar and the boys got out first.

She was accepted into the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, and spent the 2011-’12 school year teaching at Penn State. She got out by getting special permission to visit an ailing sister in Britain, and kept the fellowship secret from the Syrian government.

They soon were joined by Thair Alachkar, 48, who practiced dentistry in Syria for 25 years. His plan, initially, was to return to Syria and resume making money in his dental practice. But when the situation there worsened, his mother warned him not to return, saying government officials were asking about him.

The family might have been in limbo after the year at Penn State, but in September of 2012 Olivier Civelli, chairman of UCI’s pharmacology department, brought Alachkar to Irvine.

At UCI, she’s a visiting associated professor, working on a Scholar Rescue Fund fellowship, which will keep Alachkar at the school through the current academic year. The fund pays half of her $50,000 salary.

“I think that helping scholars, indeed colleagues, who are not as lucky as we are is part of our mission,” says Civelli, the department chair. “In addition, I think that having UCI help a Syrian scientist in dire need will reflect positively on our university.”

They think about staying in Irvine. Thair Alachkar would love to practice dentistry in Orange County, and has passed national exams, though still needs to complete an expensive, two-year residency.

Alachkar buries herself in her research, studying how to treat brain disorders such as schizophrenia, depression and autism. She tries not to worry about what’s happening in Syria.

“It’s more than work,” she says. “This is my life. This is me.”

• • •

She’s not hiding.

In October, Alachkar visited New York to speak on a panel that addressed Syrian higher education in crisis. She also has spoken to Nature magazine about the importance of preserving Syria’s scientific assets.

“I was making some impact on the minds of students,” she says of her life in Aleppo before she fled.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Alachkar received word that authorization for her to continue legally working in the U.S. had just come through, after a delay of about six months.

She and her husband had been worrying about their future, and are considering other countries in which to live. Next month, representatives of the Syrian government and opposition leaders are slated to sit down in Geneva in the first formal negotiations to end the war there.

But it’s much too dangerous, they say, to return to Syria. Neither of them thought Al-Assad’s regime still would be in place so long, and they aren’t inclined to bet on his ouster now.

So, they wait and pray.

“Assad will fall sooner or later, but he will leave the country in ruins,” Alachkar says.

“The media have made this sound like a civil war,” she adds, between sips of soup.

“But it’s a war against the regime. We all, as Syrians, are against armed revolution. But we’re desperate for support, and we aren’t getting any from the international community.”

As she speaks, her sons, Ibrahim, 14, a sophomore at University High School who enjoys wrestling, and Eithar, 7, who attends Turtle Rock Elementary School, listen quietly.

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